The accused was traced to Chennai and taken into custody.
| Photo Credit: FILE PHOTO
The Delhi police arrested a cyber fraudster for placing an IIT-Delhi student under digital arrest and duping him of ₹4.3 lakh, an officer said on Thursday. The accused, identified as Madan Lal, 29, was traced to Chennai and taken into custody.
DCP (South West) Surendra Choudhary said that in his complaint, the fourth-year engineering student mentioned that on November 16, he received a call from an individual claiming to be from a courier service. The caller falsely informed him that a suspicious parcel in his name was being shipped from Mumbai to Beijing. When the student denied any knowledge of such a parcel, the caller advised him to report the issue to the police and transferred the call to an ‘officer’ at the Gamdevi police station in Mumbai.
He further mentioned that the fraudsters impersonating police officers accused the student of being involved in criminal activities and threatened him with arrest, claiming a warrant had already been issued in his name. Exploiting his fear, the scammers coerced him into transferring money to various bank accounts to prove his innocence, he said.
He transferred ₹4.3 lakh from November 16 to November 18 through multiple online transactions. But when he understood he was deceived, he lodged a police complaint.
“An FIR was registered, and further investigation was taken up,” said the DCP. Investigators discovered that a foreign number from Hong Kong had been used to contact the complainant. It was also found that Lal withdrew the cheated money from ATMs, converted it into US dollars and cryptocurrency, and then sold them to a Chinese national at higher rates, receiving payments in bank accounts, the officer said.
Lal has confessed to his crime, he added.
Published – February 07, 2025 12:45 am IST